Soot, ii	ADJUSTMENT AND REVIVAL	43
that 'the Governments of the World must make up their minds to
achieve a broad solution by concerted action along the whole front'.
It must be repeated that, when the experts reported, the United
States had not yet left the gold standard; hence the problem of
currency stabilization had not assumed either the proportions or the
complexity that characterized it when the Conference actually met.
The Organizing Committee of the Conference had agreed ^t*its
meeting in November 1932 that three months would be required for,
the Governments to consider the experts' draft annotated agenda
before the plenary session of the Conference could be held. That would
have put the opening date at mid-April. It was recognized, further,
that it would be of little use to make the final preparations for the
Conference until the new President had assumed office in the United
States, especially as the War Debts problem, though excluded from
the agenda of the Conference proper, would harve to be faced pari
passu if any substantial results were to emerge in the fields of
exchange stabilization or tariff reduction. Later, the American
banking crisis pointed still more emphatically to the United States
as the key to the holding of the Conference. No decision was taken,
therefore, until after the Roosevelt-MacDonald and Roosevelt-
Herriot conversations. Previously, the group of countries on the gold
standard had been opposed to the early convocation of the Confer-
ence, as they felt that the time was not yet ripe. But the depreciation
of the dollar presented to their currencies such a threat—real or
imagined—as could only be exorcised by international agreement;
and it is plain that their impression of the result of the Washington
conversations was that President Roosevelt had promised to take
part at least in de facto stabilization. Accordingly, at its meeting on
the 29th April, the Organizing Committee fixed the 12th June as the
opening date of the Conference. This date was understood to have
been agreed upon by President Roosevelt and Mr. MacDonald at
Washington.
It was at this period of the preparations that the United States
Government took the lead in proposing the signature of a ' tariff
truce'1 for the period of the Conference. The proposal was promptly
acceded to by Great Britain and a number of other Powers, and by
the 12th June fourteen states had accepted the truce (some with
reservations), whereby they agreed not to adopt, before that date or
during the proceedings of the Conference, any new measures which
might increase the difficulties adversely affecting international trsfde.
1 Sec the Survey for 1930, pp. 486-95, for an account of the Geneva Confer-
ences for the purpose of establishing a tariff truce.